tightened his belt a notch. In the office, behind a locked door, he spent his work- days trying to come up with some hon- orable solution. He considered firing the girL He considered selling the factory; removing himse]f to Tasmania or Kuala Lumpur. The chfficul though, was that Marv's heart was firmly engaged. De- spite Sandra's flaws-especially that hard-edged, profit-and-Ioss shrewd- ness in her eyes-she was a living em- blem of all those lovely young women who eight or nine months ago would not have given him the time of day. He did not want to lose her, or the idea of her. In the end, therefore, Marv did noth- ing. He waited. He envisioned miracles: nuclear ho- locaust, epidemic amnesia. A t the turn of the year, on January 1, 1989, Marv Bertel weighed in at a hundred and seventy-four pounds, which for a man standing six-three, with a heart condition and chronic insomnia, began to border on the unwholesome. Five days later, he was down to a hun- dred and seventy even. The diet, he knew, had little to do with it; fear alone was sucking the muscle from his bones. He had no appetite, no ener There were times now-numerous times-when Marv found himse]f look- ing back on his obesity as if recollecting a dear departed friend, a steadfast com- rade who was always on hand with good cheer and a quart or two of premium ice cream. Not that Marv had been a happy man back then. Far from it. All the same, for better or for worse, he had managed to waddle through the world with at least the appearance of contentment and portly se]f-respect. He had gotten by. For forty-one years he had slept the sleep of the nearly innocent. Now, odd as it seemed, he could not help mourning the jolly old Marv. These changes were nerve-racking. And there was also the deceit: it was eating him alive. In ways both physical and psychological, Marv had become a shadow of himse and even that unfa- miliar, shrunken shadow often terrified him. With each miserable day; he turned a little jumpier, a little more irritable, his stomach flutterIng whenever Sandra en- tered a room or started to speak. Discov- ery was a certainty-a matter of when 96 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 10,2001 and where, never if-and yet Marv was still surprised, even shocked, when the inevitabilities finally tracked him down in early February: For several days, San- dra had become uncommonly quiet, stealing little glances at him, and at din- ner one evening she put down her fork, wiped her mouth, and said, "Some- thing's bothering me." Marv closed his eyes. He knew more or less what was in store. " I d ' " h . d " b I on t mean to pry, s e Sal, ut really, really have to ask this. You and me-us-it's a serious relationship, isn't it? I mean, this isn't some stupid office fling, we're a team, and we need to be open about everything." " 0 " M . d " N all " pen, arv Sal. atur r "Right. And I feel. . . I get suspicious sometimes. I can't help it." Marv looked away briefly; then looked back at her with hurt in his heart. It was completely genuine. For all his terror, all the sleepless nights, he was now struck by the indignation of a man not wholly trusted. He glared at her. "Look, I know it's not healthy;" San- dra said quickly; "but I'm not used to putting much faith in people. Especially men. Older men. And that's important, isn't it? That's what makes a relationship tick." She averted her eyes. "So I've been thinking-and I don't mean this in a bad way-but the thing is, I mean, you're a writer, a famous writer, except you don't . " ever wrIte. Marv shrugged. "Don't I?" he mur- mured. ""'\ ì{ T 11 D " vve ,no. 0 you. He gave the girl a cryptic frown, folded his napkin, leaned back, and lied. He informed her-with vehemence, voice quavering-that literature was not some seedy public sideshow, that it was pursued in absolute artistic solitude, paragraph by paragraph, syllable by syl- lable, and that in point of fact he slaved over his work every day, every hour, every minute-in fact, every instant of every minute. "What else," he said sternly, "do you imagine I might be doing behind that locked office door? Computer games? Solitaire?" "I didn't think-" "Moreover," he said, "this isn't some- thing a real writer talks about. We don't chat our books into oblivion, we don't broadcast creative news bulletins." His voice had sailed up an octave. Even as Marv spoke, elaborating on the general theme of privacy; it struck him that he meant every ardent word. He believed himselE As if under hypnosis, transfixed by a besieged, se]f-righteous passion, he talked about the incessant turmoil of any worthy writer, the uncertainties, the sub- jectivi the failures of nerve and lan- guage, the strain of wrestling with Satan for a line or two of decent prose. He cited Conrad on the subject. He cited Baudelaire. "You of all people," Marv said, "should understand that literature bubbles through my blood. It's myoxy- gen, my heartbeat." Sandra surveyed his face for a second. She backed off "Fair enough," she said. "I mean, if you're actually writing, well, fine, I'm glad." "Swell of you," Marv muttered, though his tone was begrudging and whin In part this was genuine. In much larger part, however, it was a mask for his amazement at how easy it had been, how swiftly she'd surrendered. Then again, he thought, who would not? The au- dacity of the lie-its scope and grandeur, its breathtaking magnitude-suddenly unnerved him. It was not, after all, as if he were claiming to be some backwater hack, some scribbling midlist nobody. He had appropriated genius. He had taken for his own an entire life's work, a couple of masterpieces, a way of think- ing, a way of being, another man's ener- gies and chemistry and fame and labor and God-given virtuosi The realization sickened him. Something sour and deadly rose into his throat, like the taste of cancer, and at that instant lVlarv came within a single breath of disclosing everything. But also at that instant, across the table, Sandra gave her hair a little toss and said, "Prob- lem is, I still don't get it." " G ....." . d M etr Sal arv. "Well, I'm an executive assistant," she said. "I see your mail, I take your calls, and there's never. . . never anything lit- erary. It's all mops and brooms." The impulse to confess evaporated, replaced by a kind of wounded fury. It was perverse, Marv knew; but some bull- headed aspect of his personality rebelled against such galling cynicism. For the next ten or fifteen minutes, he delivered a soliloquy about the role of literary agents, about anonymity, about direct